Tunnels 03, Freefall

bridge, or something like that. Is that right?"
    "S'pose so, yes," Chester shrugged.
    "But how could a submarine get all the way down here? How could that happen?"
    "What about the stuff you were telling me about moving dishes?" Chester suggested.
    "Moving plates," Will corrected him. He strolled slowly around, inspecting the sophisticated arrays of equipment. "Yes, plate tectonics. Some sort of seismic shift on the sea bed... perhaps the submarine just got sucked in." Then he reached where Chester had left Elliott, still on her stretcher. It brought him back to the reason they had come here. "We need those medical supplies. Martha, which way are they?"
    "Here," she said, already heading through a rounded doorway with a raised threshold, then along the gangway on the other side. As they passed a cabin with an open door, Will spotted objects floating in dirty water. Because of the angle of the hull, the water rose above the height of the floor grille down one side of the ship. He saw clothes, a single deck shoe and some sodden cardboard boxes partially immersed in it, white tendrils of mildew growing over them.
    "Hold on a second -- there's something here," he said, as he stooped to pick it up.
    "A newspaper," Chester suggested, as Will opened it out. Half of it had been turned to a soggy pulp by the water, but the rest was still legible. Will saw a picture of a man with a large moustache, and that the print around it was in Russian.
    As Chester looked over his shoulder, Will pointed to the top of the page. "You're right -- it could be a Rusky newspaper... but can you read what that says? Is it a date?" he asked.
    "Atdhf v m," Chester said, struggling with the word. "Um... I'd have to try to remember what that means -- it must be the month -- but look here at the year. It's less than a year old!" Then he frowned. "I don't even know what the date is now."
    "I've no idea either," Will said. He bit his lip as something occurred to him. "You know, I suppose I could even be fifteen by now. I might have had a birthday." Then he chucked the paper down. "But none of this is going to help Elliott. Come on."
    They went along a gangway and through several bulkhead doors until Martha came to a cabin. She seemed reluctant to enter it. Chester looked at her questioningly. "Too many bad memories," she whispered.
    Will had already poked his head inside the cabin. "It's a mess in there."
    Martha nodded. "It was like that when I found it," she said.
    "But what about the people -- the crew? Was there any sign of them when Nathaniel first came here?" Chester asked.
    "None. And from the looks of it, they left in a hurry. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to crawl away someplace and get some sleep," she said, as she staggered wearily back along the gangway.
    Will and Chester set about searching the cabin, in which there was an examination table and a light on an adjustable stand. There were also several medical posters of the human body on the walls. Many metal-framed chairs were heaped in a corner as if they'd just been thrown there, and a good deal of broken glass and medical instruments were strewn across the floor. But what immediately caught the boys' attention was that one whole side of the cabin was taken up by tall cabinets. They quickly began to open these, finding that inside them were numerous drawers, all lined with foam inserts. Will clucked as he found only empty impressions in the foam in the drawers he was searching, but Chester was having more luck. He was coming across a large number of bottles of pills and liquids.
    The boys worked together, taking everything out and placing it on the examination table. As they were doing this, Chester remarked on the dark patches all over the melamine surface of the table. "What do you think this is?" he asked, gingerly touching one of them.
    "Could be blood," Will said, screwing up his face.
    Chester stared at it uneasily for several seconds. "So what did happen to the crew?"
    "Who knows? Perhaps they were all wiped out by those flying things I saw," Will replied. "Why else would they leave so much kit behind?" He sniffed, then sniffed again. "Do you smell that? There's something sort of sour in here."
    "Hope it's not me," Chester said earnestly, lifting up an arm to sample his armpit.
    Will smiled. "No, I don't mean us. It's a chemical smell. Like chloroform or something."
    Chester rubbed his forehead, his expression one of concern. "I was thinking... what if the very thing we need --